Tag Archives: lie in

Wednesday 6th March 2019 – I’VE ONLY BEEN …

… out once today, and that was this evening.

I did intend to go out mid-afternoon as usual, but I only made half-way down the stairs before I saw the rainstorm raging outside. Not the kind of weather to put a dog out – never mind me.

I tuned round and went back.

We had the usual alarms this morning, and the usual lie-in until 07:25 before I crawled out from under the covers.

Plenty of time to go off on a nocturnal ramble. Last night I was in my house – which could have been anywhere, and a group of us was discussing the floor in the place. We ended up coming to the conclusion that what was needed was a layer of self-levelling cement. This involved moving absolutely everything off the floor so that we could lay the cement, but while everyone was in agreement with the decision, no-one wanted to do the work and it was a very dispirited crew that set to work in there.
Some time later I was in Crewe, wanting to go to the Aldi supermarket. And this was somewhere over at the back of Mill Street in the old terraced houses that had been demolished in the late 1960s. There was a big ruined brick building overgrown with branches and trees. Someone was throwing into the tree a kind of boomerang with a knife blade edge in order to try to cut off a few branches for firewood, but the resounding thud was shaking him up and he was retreating, in a style reminiscent of someone with St Vitus’s Dance. Behind there, amongst all of the weeds and rubble and wild trees was the Aldi Supermarket, all swathed in ivy. It all looked pretty desolate until you were very close to it. Outside was a kind of wire display basket with bananas in there. And what a price they were too. Brexit is beginning to bite.

Most of the day I’ve spent working on three web pages for Carnaval and Mardi Gras for this year. One page for each day.

Some of the photos have come out really well and I’m pleased with them, although others aren’t quite as good as I was hoping.

Whenever I fancied a break, I shredded a few papers and now there’s a huge mound of the aforementioned waiting for me to take them to the container.

If I keep on at this rate, they should be all gone in a few days and that will be a weight off my mind.

And, unfortunately, round about 13:00 I dozed off on my chair for half an hour.

With having made progress on the tracks that I’ve been playing on the bass (I can even play on the bass the guitar riff from Tom Petty’s track “Makin’ Some Noise” off Into The Great Wideopen – probably the best album Tom Petty ever made), I downloaded a few more tracks to work on.

These are going to be much more complicated to work out but I need to push onwards.

Tea tonight was a lentilburger with pasta and tomato sauce followed by more apple pie and coconut-flavoured soya cream. Delicious it was too.

The rain had stopped this evening so I went out. Windy it was though, so I was all alone except for a jogger with a LED headlight thing.

The sky was quite clear and there was a nice view across the tidal harbour over to the quay where the ferries to the Ile de Chausey and Jersey tie up.

In the background are the lights of the southern part of the town.

So tonight I’ll have an early night and try to have a decent sleep. Thursday tomorrow so I’m going to try to go for a walk to LIOL and do my shopping.

There’s a few things that I need.

Friday 1st March 2019 – DYDD GWYL DDEWI HAPUS …

… to everyone.

And haven’t I had a big surprise today.

Remember when I went into the Mairie the other day to have a discussion with the Maire and ended up with the secretary?

Well, the secretary phoned me back today. Apparently the Maire has taken on board my remarks, made a few enquiries and come back to me.

I wasn’t expecting that, that’s for sure.

It’s not advanced things very much, as I didn’t expect that it would, but having someone like the Maire on your side is a comfort in these difficult times.

And difficult times they are.

Being completely wound up last night as I was, I was still up working at 02:00, totally unable to sleep. More like 02:30 when I went to bed,. And as for sleep, well, there wasn’t very much of that. I was tossing and turning all night.

There was enough time to go off on a travel. I was in Greece in some kind of primitive café helping with moral support (although what support I could ever give anyone would be considered as being moral) some girl who was trying to run it despite all of the opposition and difficulties that her family – the nominal owners – were putting in her path. The strange thing was that when the alarms went off, I totally ignored them and stayed in bed. And although I was by now awake, the journey carried on. And carried on for miles too from exactly the same place where I awoke. Not something that happens every day.

By 09:25 I was ready to awaken, and straight into controversy yet again where a couple of self-important auto-sycophants were bragging about how they had “briefed” a politician and “won a famous victory for UK citizens in Europe” by getting him to look at at. Completely oblivious of the fact that the EU had thrown out this idea weeks ago.

And so this totally shameless display of self-serving egocentricity caused me to explode yet again. And even deeper into the abyss.

I went for a very late breakfast after that. and then came back to start on the blog and the text database.

But not for long, because the Mairie interrupted me.

And then, almost immediately, another phone call from someone else who is on my list of things to do.

This started me off on a wave of work. From somewhere, I summoned up a piece of energy so went on a tidy-up in the bedroom.

Bank statements are fairly tidy now and I found a couple of other papers. And so I then sat down, made a few more phone calls, sent out some e-mails and wrote a letter too.

It may sound not much, but it certainly made an impression on the stuff in here.

My lunch was a light one, and that made me feel a little better.

I did manage to do some work on the photos and the database. Not a lot, but I’m back as far as 18th October 2018. It’s going a little quicker than I was expecting.

Later on in the afternoon I went for my afternoon walk.

I went around the headland at the Pointe du Roc through the crowds and hordes of tourists up there

And there was a beautiful view across the harbour right over to the coast on the far side by the Cale de Hacqueville.

There were quite a few people at the Chantier Navale, loitering around that big wooden boat that I mentioned last time, so I went over for a chat.

The boat that is on there is in fact La Granvillaise – a yacht that we have seen on many occasions around the harbour.

She’s been taken out of the water for a complete refit and overhaul by the volunteers, and she’s going to be there for a while.

While I was down there at the Chantier Navale, I went over to have a look at Armor – the ship from the diving place down the Brittany coast.

They’ve stripped off most of the old paint, and are currently giving it a good go over in white primer, ready presumably for its top coat.

They have put a lot of work into it. It will look good when it’s finished.

My route into town took me past the place Charles de Gaulle.

Here I could admire the stage that they had erected the other day. Events will be getting under way tonight, although I won’t be down there.

Instead, I went to the Post Office and sent off the letter that I had written. It won’t go until Monday afternoon but it needs to be on its way.

Back up the hill, I stopped to watch one of the ferries from the Ile de Chausey coming into port.

And there was a weird commotion going on behind me.

Some woman pulled up in her car, shouted to a passer-by “watch my vehicle” and ran off down the road shouting “Chantal” or something.

Everyone was standing around there shaking their heads.

Back here, I had a pleasant surprise. A friend of mine in the UK has sent me a little present for my birthday to help me along my way. That was just so very thoughtful of him and I’m overwhelmed.

Tea was a small stuffed pepper with a little rice followed by a pot of soya dessert and a banana.

And then football. The Welsh Cup, Caernarfon Town v Connah’s Quay Nomads.

Connah’s Quay were strangely subdued, michael Wilde was at walking pace and Callum Saunders was somewhere else in his mind, I think.

But Caernarfon seem to have gone off the boil too – a shadow of the impressive hard-working side of earlier in the season.

The Nomads won 2-1, but it was a very long game.

So it’s bedtime now.

I’m feeling a little better, and maybe a decent sleep might cheer me up again.

It’s Carnaval tomorrow.

And I seem to have lost one of the camera gloves that my friend Liz bought me for my birthday of 2008. I’m dismayed.

coastline granville manche normandy france

chateau de la crete granville manche normandy france

harbour light st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy franc

Tuesday 26th February 2019 – I REMEMBER HEARING …

… the water heater switch itself off this morning at 06:25 but if anyone thinks that there was a possibility of me leaping sprightly out of bed at that time of the morning, they are totally mistaken.

Instead, I turned over and went back to sleep. 08:25 is much more like it for someone recovering from a viral bronchitis.

Plenty of time though, to go off on a few little voyages.

We started off on a big ship last night and sailing down some channel, and a few fires breaking out here and there, including a large one that, in order to put this one out, I had to sail the ship into the lee of the shore. I was tempted to laugh off these attempts and dismiss them, pretend that they hadn’t happened, but somehow there were too many witnesses and there were too many signs of damage.
A little later on, I was wandering over some kind of park supervising the cleaning. There were papers littering the place, torn ones of the kind that would have been the track of a 1920s paperchase in a Public School. One of the young gardeners had made very little effort to clean them up, and I wondered why. He exlained to me that his blower wasn’t working properly so that there wasn’t very much that he could do. I asked him whether he had reported the matter or taken the machine to be prepared, to which he didn’t respond. So I gave him a little lecture.
Later still, I was in a room in my house. This was somewhere round by the east end of Crewe by where Nerina’s family lived. I had to go off to the south of the town so I wheeled out the old Honda Melody that I had when I first moved to Brussels. I wasn’t sure how much fuel was in it, and whether I ought to go down Earle Street on it to the cheap petrol station or down Macon Way to the petrol station on the roundabout by the station. The latter was a shorter route by a couple of hundred metres but the fuel was dearer, and bearing in mind the fuel consumption of the Melody, how much difference would it make? And then I had the big motor-scooter – a four-stroke foot-first thing that ought to have a run out too. There was also a bike lying on its side on the floor of what I imagined was my bedroom. The wheel was wedged up against the wall so when I moved it, the wheel spun round and the dynamo front light illuminated. And I couldn’t understand why there was sand all over the floor.
Finally … “thank God” – ed … I was at the seaside. We were sitting in a coach that was being used as a waiting room. A discussion broke out amongst a few people about some kind of pink pottery on board a ship and that corresponded with some kind of nocturnal voyage on which I’d departed years ago. I tried to insert it into the conversation but no-one paid any attention. So I ignored the conversation and tried to read the newspaper. But reading a newspaper on a coach even when it was stationary was rather difficult. Eventually I looked up to see that the people to whom I’d been talking had all moved on. Instead, there were other people, talking about Mr Soandso whose car had just been badly damaged by some kids whose sled had gone out of control and collided with the car.

I eventually crawled out of my bed and went off to sort out my medication and some time later, I went back for a pile of porridge for breakfast.

And having done that, I had some errands to run.

Not that I managed to go very far.

There has been some work going on at the Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs for a few days now so I was interested to see what was happening.

It looks as if they are replacing the window seals around the dormer windows in the roof by working on one of the mobile platforms that they had out here over the early part of the winter.

On the way down the hill I met the “electrician” from the other day. Busy erecting wooden shuttering around an empty shop front.

Just as I thought. Some electrician.

First stop was at the estate agent’s. I’d had a reminder about a bill that I’d missed and I needed to find out what.

Seems like I have the dustbin tax to pay.

Second stop was at the Mairie. I’ve decided to take the Bull by the Horns and tackle Madame la Maire about my little project.

It’s not easy because she’s busy, but it you don’t try, you don’t get.

I made it past the downstairs and as far as her secretary, and the latter took a pile of notes. We shall see where we go with this, but at least I’ve put my feet on the road.

Final stop was at the bank – firstly to pay the dustbin tax of course, and secondly, to find out why my telephone provider had sent me a reminder for a bill.

It seems that it’s not from the telephone provider at all but, as I suspected, one of these scams that is going around.

I checked at the Telephone company, and they confirmed it.

Back down the hill in town I noticed that they are pushing along with the preparations for Carnaval.

The roundabout that was there the other day has gone, and in its place is a stage. I seem to remember there being some music on there last year, as well as the MC of the whole proceedings.

I hope that it’s going to be a little more lively this year than last.

Round the corner and up the hill, and a temporary road closure.

The rue des Juifs is where they park some of the floats for the carnaval, and so they are clearing the streets of some of the street furniture to give them more room to manoeuvre.

Outside one of the cafés here is an old rowing boat that is used by customers to sit in and admire the evening. They are in the middle of winching it off to I’ve no idea where.

Back up here I carried on with updating the blog but it was soon lunchtime.

And it was such a beautiful afternoon that I made some butties and went to sit outside on the wall.

While I was there I took a few photos with the different lenses of the camera and edited them.

You can see the results down below and these shouls give you some kind of idea of what the camera is – or isn’t – doing.

After lunch, I attacked the Royal Bank of Scotland yet again.

A mere 87 minutes on the telephone and not much further forward either and this is going to be a very long job to persuade them to do what I want to do, and take me a great deal of effort.

I just don’t know why I’m stuck with the useless pile of bankers that I seem to have acquired. I am really totally and absolutely full of dismay about all of this.

Totally fed up, I went off for a walk around the walls. And took another pile of photos on different settings.

Strangely, it seems to work like it should on automatic exposure, and about three stops up on manual exposure – in other words, it needs twice as much light than it says that it’s receiving.

I’ve had a look on the internet to see if there’s any firmware update, but not at all. So I’ve no idea now.

No tea tonight. I had a few biscuits and one of Jenny’s chocolates, followed by a chocolate soya drink. Not that I couldn’t have eaten anything but I’m trying to keep some weigh off now that I’ve got it off.

I don’t suppose that I’ll be able to keep it up but that’s no reason for not trying.

Instead, I went for a walk around the Pointe du Roc in the pleasant evening, and to play with the camera again – this time with the 50mm f1.8 lens.

Of course it’s very difficult to tell what’s happening with that lens because I only every use it in the dark and set it by eye anyway, frame by frame.

But they don’t look like they used to, that’s for sure, especially after all of the work that I’ve been putting in.

Round to the entrance to the harbour to watch the trawlers come in with their catch.

This would have been a beautiful photo in the right conditions with reliable equipment, and I was expecting to have done something much better than this after all of the practice that I’ve been doing.

I’m going to have to upgrade the camera some time soon, which is a shame.

So, dismayed, I’m off to bed. An early night. I’ve decided to start with the alarms tomorrow and see how I’m going to get on.

——— RANGE ONE ——-

beach quay herel granville manche normandy france

——- RANGE TWO ——–

donville les bains city walls granville manche normandy france

crowds beach plat gousset granville manche normandy france

trawler coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

trawlers coming in to port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Sunday 24th February 2019 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!

I’m officially (I think) an old-age pensioner, having reached the ripe (and getting riper as I get older) old age of 65.

And you can tell, too. This morning I switched on the hi-fi and then waited for ten minutes wondering why the computer hadn’t switched on.

Last night wasn’t all that late, but I was expecting something better than being awake at 05:30. I heard the water switch off at 06:25 but then I must have gone back to sleep somehow because it was 08:30 when I awoke a second time, and 09:00 when I crawled out of bed.

Piles of goodwill messages already, which is always very nice. I’ll have to reply to them at some time. But now I’m going to have breakfast. To dive into a big bowl of porridge, and maybe some grapefruit juice as well.

Back here, total chaos yet again as that evil dictator in nominal charge of this mad, insane flight over the cliff into disaster goes off on another pointless walkabout with no purpose other than to prolong the delay in suffering another humiliation.

We’re experiencing a coup d’état from the top, just word-for-word and action-for-action as Jacques Benoit-Mechin predicted in De La Defaite Au Desastre.

Rosemary rang me for a chat too but I couldn’t stay talking for long. My throat gave out after a while and I had to hang up. I need to look aout after myself.

Instead, I went for a walk in the glorious sunny weather.

Around the headland amongst the crowds and then down the steps to the harbour.

I had a walk underneath the fish-processing plant to see what I could see, which included a horde of gulls picking over the broken shells that had cascaded down through the floor into the mud.

Over the gates to the other side of the harbour and out to the other side of the town.

On the Parking Hérel the lorries were arriving; bringing the fairground in. Carnaval starts tomorrow so they’ll be setting up tonight ready for things to get swinging underway.

Back into town, I went for a sorbet – the first of the year. And I sat in the sun on the square to eat it too. It really was a beautiful day today and I was enjoying every minute of it.

The way back home was via a diversion in a street that I had never visited before.

I’d seen some construction work going on at the Place des Corsaires and I had wondered what it was. They are in fact demolishing – or half-demolishing – a house and building it up with breeze blocks like they are doing with that house on the rue du Nord that we visit from time to time.

Back here, I opened my birthday presents. Jenny sent me some chocolates and Alison a money belt and a useful tool for eating out. I have some lovely friends.

Tea was a vegan pizza – not as nice as usual because there wasn’t much to go on it. And then a lovely walk around the walls in the dark and the solitude.

I’ll go to bed now. Not too early but not too late. No alarm tomorrow either. I’m going to take it easy which I try to get back my strength.

crowds sunshine pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

chantier navale port de granville harbour manche normandy france

sanding down respraying armor port de granville harbour manche normandy france

lobster pots port de granville harbour manche normandy france
“How do you train a lobster to go on one of these?”

underneath the fish processing plant port de granville harbour manche normandy france

rue etoupefour granville manche normandy france

Thursday 21st February 2019 – HAVING GONE …

… to bed at all of 14:30 yesterday, that was that until some time round about 08:40. And by now, the viral infection that I had had last winter and which I knew was on its way (one of the many reasons that I keep this blog is that I can keep track of my health and my symptoms) was fully installed.

Just like last time I was coughing so much that my ribs were hurting, my nose was streaming and I just felt like death.

But I had to haul myself out of bed because I was expecting a visitor this afternoon and the place was in no state to receive any.

First off, the vacuum cleaner wouldn’t work properly. But that was soon remedied when I emptied the container and unblocked the pipe. I could then move the furniture around and wash some of the floor.

That killed me off completely so I went back to bed.

When the doorbell rang, I leapt out of bed and let in the electrician. regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have been having electricity issues with the apartment and I’d been to see the estate agent about it.

He simply disconnected the socket, looked inside and saw that there was no wire adrift, said “it looks all right to me” and reassembled it. And that was that. No test meter, no oscilloscope, no nothing whatever. He did nothing that I hadn’t done, and even less than Terry had done.

He was a musician too, and he was far more interested in the Gibson bass. We had a lengthy chat about guitars and music that took up far more time than the electricity bit. And for that reason I refrained from casting any nasturtiums on his performance (or lack thereof) on the electrical stage.

Once he’d cleared off, I went back to bed. And that’s how the rest of the day unfolded.

Round about 19:30 I struggled out of bed, with the idea that I might try something to eat. It’s been 54 hours since I last ate.

A packet of vegetable soup with water and this vermicelli pasta all stirred up, and I managed – ever so slowly – to have half a litre with some bread from the freezer.

And then back to bed where I immediately broke out into a fever. The food was right, but the timing was wrong.

The coughing and the uncontrollable nose increased in vigour and I had a really incomfortable night. I couldn’t find the Vick and my olbas oil is pretty ancient now and lost most of its efficacity. So I suffered. And suffered.

A few minutes sleep here and there was all that I managed throughout the night.

Tuesday 19th February 2019 – OVER THE PAST …

… few days – or more like a few weeks – I’ve been complaining about not feeling too well. I had an idea about what might have been happening and now I know.

With having turned off the alarm last night, I was looking forward to a decent sleep. I had something much better than 08:40 in mind.

I don’t know what I had done during the night but I awoke feeling totally and thoroughly dreadful. I know that I’ve been feeling down just recently, but this was down on another level.

It took a while to haul myself out of bed and have breakfast and by now I was feeling rather better. Well enough to set out into town to pick up my medication and a baguette at Delhaize.

I had a wander back via FNAC to see what cameras they had on offer but there was nothing that I really fancied having a play with.

But this was where my little morning stroll came unstuck because I was hit with a wave of fatigue.

I headed off back to my little room, passing by the corner of the Vital Decosterstraat and the Monseigneur Ladeuzeplein to see what the noise was, to find that they were pressure-washing the walls of a building.

Back home, I really fancied a coffee but instead I sat down in a comfy chair and went to sleep.

Round about 13:30 I came to and made myself a sandwich, but by 14:00 I was on the bed and under the covers. Goodnight Vienna!

The next thing that I remembered was that it was 21:30. I can’t recall ever feeling as ill for ages as I was feeling right now, and I’m heading off home tomorrow morning. But I forced myself out of bed to pack and then went back to bed. And that’s my lot for today.

Friday 15th February 2019 – AS WHAT SEEMS TO BE …

… the normal procedure this morning, I heard the alarms go off and then turned over and went back to sleep.

The irony about that is I was wide awake at 04:40 and lay there tossing and turning until 06:00. Going back to sleep straight away and not waking up at 07:25 is bizarre.

During the night I’d been on my travels. On a bus holiday too but the bus was huge – it was more like an aeroplane with over 200 people in it, although it was rather laid out like a bus. I had a double-seat to myself but I had noticed a girl who would have been an ideal companion to share my seat. The driver announced that those people going on the optional excursions needed to alight and board another bus. That meant me, but I hadn’t been to my hotel yet. So I had to fight my way down to the front to speak to the driver. He told me that it did include me, so I had to fight my way to the back again, pick up my possessions, struggle through the crowds with my huge suitcase and find my bus. The driver looked at me and laughed. He said that it was the first time that he had ever had a passenger wishing to bring all of their possessions on an optional excursion. I replied that this was because I hadn’t yet been allowed to go to my hotel, and what was he going to do about it? But he walked off.

A late breakfast of course, and then a relaxing day without doing anything exciting.

And by the time that I’d finished, I’d finished the web-page with the photos of Cologne back in December and put it on line. The photos are a little disappointing, mainly because the weather was so dreadful, but one or two of them have some remarkable effects.

Having attended to that, I could then press on with the blog entry for that day too. That’s now on-line too.

That doesn’t sound as if I have done very much today but, believe me, it wasn’t particularly straightforward. And having done the difficult bit, I can press on with the rest of the blog.

That hummus that I made the other day is even more wicked than it was when I made it. It’s maturing nicely and the garlic smells delicious. It should keep me going – in many more senses than one – for a considerable time.

This afternoon was one of the nicest afternoons that I have ever experienced in a February.

It really was a pleasure to be out and about in it – so much so that I actually went out earlier than normal.

There was a light sea mist that prevented a really good view down the coast, but the skies were blue and so was the sea – a really deep summery blue.

And I wasn’t the only one out there enjoying the weather either, as you might expect.

There were hordes of people milling around on the grass on the Pointe du Roc around the old military installations of the Atlantic Wall. And who can blame them?

In the foreground on the left is one of the rotation tracks for one of the large guns that were positioned here, and on the right in the background is the former military athletics track that is now the playing field for the College Malraux.

There was plenty of activity on the sea too.

A yacht was quite happily sailing past the headland of the Pointe du Roc and I went to take a photo of it – and just at that very moment a seagull flew past the camera.

That’s what they call a “photo-bombing with a difference” and I couldn’t reproduce that photo if I tried for a hundred years.

Round the corner and today’s walk took me on the cliffs above the chantier navale.

As I mentioned the other day, there’s a lot of activity going on in there right now. They seem to be very busy and that’s always good news.

There are a couple of new boats in there today too. We saw the yacht and the trawler in there when we went past on Monday, but the third one in there is new.

She’s Armor owned by a leisure diving company from near Lannion in the Côtes d’Armor, in between St Brieuc and Roscoff. So she’s come a long way to be serviced here.

I had to fight off a wave of fatigue round about 17:00, which is an improvement from just recently.

Tea was a vegan burger with pasta, veg and tomato sauce. Quite delicious it was too.

I was alone on my walk again this evening. And I can’t think why because it really was pleasant out there. Not at all like a February night.

I had a wander around the walls and spent a couple of minutes looking at the traffic driving up the hill and round the slalom of the Avenue de la Libération.

No-one – not even a seagull – disturbed me at all while I was out there

No cats either tonight, so I trudged on homewards.

There’s a small house in the Place du Parvis Notre Dame that has attracted my attention. Some evenings it’s illuminated by a lampt outside, and tonight the building was looking particularly attractive.

It would come out even better if I had a better camera that would stop down even lower. This was taken with the 18-105mm lens at f3.75 at ISO800.

Saturday tomorrow and ordinarily I would be going shopping. But on Sunday I’m heading off to Leuven again so I shan’t bother.

I might have a little wander into town tomorrow morning though and visit the market to see what is going on. They should be starting the preparations for the Carnaval too and I’ll be interested to see where they are up to.

brehal plage granville manche normandy france

marker light rocks waves granville manche normandy france

waves on rocks pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boat english channel granville manche normandy france

lifeboat memorial port entrance marker light baie de mont st michel st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

sailing boats yachts baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

trawler fishing boat refuelling port de granville harbour manche normandy france

Wednesday 13th February 2019 – THIS WAS ANOTHER …

… day when things started off by going wrong.

The alarms went off as usual at 06:00 etc – I know because I heard them – but despite having had an early-ish night it was 07:25 when I awoke. And 07:50 when I crawled out of the stinking pit.

I’d been on my travels during the night too. Back in Crewe again in fact, with a group of people planning to travel to a football match – as we did a few times back in the mid-70s. But this time, the match was somewhere near Wrexham and even on a nocturnal ramble I was able to realise that this was something that would be extremely unlikely.

After breakfast I cracked on with my work.

The blog is now done as far back as 28th December 2018, and the text database for December 2018 is almost finished.

But apart from that, the fact that I now have my passport means that I can set in motion a couple of other little projects that I have in the back of my mind. I sent out a couple of mails and I’ve even had a reply from one of them.

That was quick!

As well as that, I have a contact whom I met on board the Good Ship Ve… errr … Ocean Endeavour. He’s an agent for Nikon cameras so I’ve been talking to him today about a new camera. He seems to think that the new mirrorless Nikon Z6 would do what I want, but after my bad experience with the Nikon 1 J5 I’m just a little bit wary of mirrorless cameras.

We had lunch of course, and a session on the guitar.

And then a walk out this afternoon.

And it was another gorgeous day. A real pleasure to be out in the sun and it was actually warm out there which was a surprise.

The beach looked really inviting and I was tempted to go for a walk thereupon but I have too much to do right now than to go off idly passing the time.

There was a sea haze out there looking northwards and visibility wasn’t all that good today.

There was a yacht in the distance off the coast of Bréhal-Plage, but there were also a couple more of these buoys that we have been seeing just recently.

I still haven’t worked out what they might be for. They appear as if by magic and the next day they are gone.

For tea tonight, I had a stuffed pepper with spicy rice. And it was just as delicious as normal. But there’s plenty of stuffing left so it might be a potato curry tomorrow to finish it off. there’s half a leek from the other day that will go in there nicely.

Out for my walk again tonight. And once more I was the only one out there, which is a shame because it really was quite nice out there;

You couldn’t see anything to the north because the mist had closed in, but to the south we were treated once more to the fishing boats going around the harbour.

Only the small ones because the tide was only just coming in. The ones with a deeper draught will be in there later.

So while I go to bed for an early night I’ll leave you with the news that the British Defence Minister has said today that The UK will use Military force to protect its interests after Brexit.

He went on to say “we must strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality, and increase our mass”.

“Increase our lethality”! Just what planet are these fools living on?

To think that these are the people who are going to lead the UK into the Brave New post-Brexit world. They are insane!

It’s this kind of 19th-Century sabre-rattling that makes me more and more ashamed and embarrassed to admit that I’m British.

beach pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

buoy yacht donville les bains brehal plage granville manche normandy france

beach diving platform plat gousset granville manche normandy france

promenade plat gousset granville manche normandy france

place georges clemenceau granville manche normandy france

night trawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france

night trawlers port de granville harbour manche normandy france

coa

Monday 11th February 2019 – THAT WAS ONE …

… of the nicest cheese sauces that I have ever tasted, never mind ever made.

Tonight, everything went perfectly and my steamed vegetables with vegan sausages and vegan cheese sauce were totally delicious, and I’ll eat that again any day of the week.

Another bit of news is that ever since I came back from the Arctic I’ve been trying to make an appointment to see some people. They finally replied in mid-January to say that there were no appointments just now, and the same e-mail has come every two weeks.

But today, I’ve had a different mail sent by a different person, and this has an air of being somewhat more optimistic.

However, that is just about all of the good news today. The rest of it hasn’t been so good.

It all started to go wrong as early as 06:00 this morning.

This was another one of these days where even though the alarm went off, I took absolutely no notice whatsoever. I turned over and went straight back to sleep. Not out of willingness, I hasten to add, but simply because I couldn’t wake myself up.

07:45 was much more like it, and leaving my bed at 08:30 was even more interesting. It’s not my usual modus operandi for a weekday as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but after the miserable day yesterday when I missed my lie-in, I must have needed it.

I’d been on my travels too during the night. And surprisingly (or maybe not, because it’s the whole point of doing all of this) it was a continuation of a couple of voyages that I had been on several years ago. I was in Brussels working in an office and I’d gone home for lunch. I decided to have a salad but a “fried” salad. So I tossed a lettuce leaf into a frying pan and it singed up around the edges. The rest of the salad I tossed into another frying pan but it was one in which my younger sister had just fried an egg and she’d used lard or dripping to do that. I left my home to head back to work but found myself right outside the city with the high-rise towers away in the distance and I was wondering however I would reach work in time to restart. But there – that weird American company for which I once worked – I was chatting to a former colleague of mine (from another employment) who was terribly upset. She’d received a copy of a bill that someone had sent in, on which she had been described as a “barsteward” – and this offended her deeply. Meantime, there were a pile of magazines lying around in the office. They were entitled “The Flame of Islam”, and although that might sound an inflammatory title, it was actually a Christian publication. Not many people knew that, which probably explains why they looked so astonished when I suggested that we go out and sell them to passing motorists in our lunch breaks.

First thing that I noticed this morning was that I had the kind of thirst that you could photograph. I downed about a litre of my Vitamin B12 juice straight off.

After a rather late breakfast, I settled down to wait for my passport to arrive.

And waited

And waited.

Meanwhile, I tried to concentrate on the work that I needed to do – such as the photo database and backdating the blog.

After much binding in the marsh I made the blog back to 6th January 2019.

But the photo database was rather slower today. I couldn’t really get going for some reason. But then I have days like this, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

And that’s not all the bad news either. I’m having camera issues yet again.

And that’s a shame because the bird-men were out in force today.

I’ve noticed for the last couple of months that the camera is having issues focusing, especially at night. And when it is particularly dark, I have to find a distant point of light to use as a focusing object.

But today, the focusing is simply not working most of the time, and especially when the background is neutral, like a large patch of sky.

I can hear the motor in the lens engaging and the focal length changes, but it creeps in to the beginning and blurs out

And it’s not just with one of the lenses – it’s with all of them.

I’ve tried to adjust the focal settings and that’s not made any difference. I think that the camera is slowly dying.

But that’s not really a surprise. I bought it in Canada in an emergency, back in 2012. It was an end-of-range model then and I paid peanuts for it, so I can’t really complain.

It’s just disappointing.

The only way that I can make it work is to focus on a specific object that is sharp enough to register.

So anyway, I pushed on round the corner to see what things were like round by the lifeboat memorial.

It might look cloudy out there, but it was surprisingly warm. And that had brought out the crowds – especially as it seems to be school holidays right now.

One thing that I have noticed is that there seems to be a spring of some sort here on the Pointe du Roc.

There would have to be, I suppose, otherwise they would never have put a fortified city up here. They would need a water supply in case of a siege.

But today was the first time that I had noticed the water evacuating out into the sea down below.

And here, I had a message. My passport will be delivered tomorrow.

After tea, I went out for my evening walk around the walls.

There was no-one around even though it was a pleasant evening. There was no storm tonight and the tide was quite far out, so we weren’t treated to the spectacle of the waves smashing on to the sea walls.

And so I didn’t linger long out there. I came back here instead.

And I’ll be trying once again for an early night. And this time, hoping that I can get out of bed at something very close to the correct time.

hang gliding pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

Sunday 3rd February 2019 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

… afternoon it was today.

Beautiful and sunny, not too windy, not too cold. And hordes of people wandering around outside. Round about 15:00 I joined them and went for a good walk. I didn’t make it back until 17:30.

All around the headland, down into town, around the harbour, back into town and then back here. And had the ice-cream stall that sells vegan sorbets been open, I would have treated myself to the first ice-cream of the year.

Now, with having an early night last night, and nice fresh bedding too, that I would have had a deep, relaxing sleep. But unfortunately not. Round about 02:40 I had another massive attack of cramp and I was in total agony. I just couldn’t ease it off and ended by standing up and trying to stretch my leg.

All in all, it took about half an hour until the pain would ease up enough that I could go back to bed. But any chance of going back to sleep was long-gone. I was awake for hours until I finally slipped away.

But I must have gone to sleep at some time, because I was off on my travels.

I was in a some kind of weird pub last night – some pub not too dissimilar to the one next to the old Town Hall in Crewe. All dirty, run-down and very basic. And I was waiting for someone there. I’d actually booked a room in a hotel a couple of miles outside the town. But a couple came in to the pub and said that they had a room booked there, so the landlord showed them up. As this couple looked quite respectable, I wondered what the rooms were like so I asked the landlord to show me a room. He took me upstairs, and the room was dreadful. A really bad 1960s-type of room with about 10 beds crammed in any old how, with heavy plush bed coverings and really looking in the worst possible taste. I didn’t even hang around to see if it was clean and damp-free. I just made an excuse about it obviously being out of my price range and walked out.
Later on, I was on board the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour again. We were going to have a meeting about our journey and to sum everything up, but it was postponed. A very short while later, I was reading a newspaper on board ship, and it gave an “account” of this meeting, clearly written in advance of the meeting in anticipation of it taking place. To my surprise, the person who had written it was an old comrade of mine at the Open University and he had written quite a lot about my role in the voyage, blowing it up to well beyond what it really was, and putting a link in to my blog where readers could read so much more about it. However, the editor had edited out the url of the blog which disappointed me greatly.

08.40 when I finally awoke, but that’s not the same as saying that I was up and about. Much more like 09:30, or even 10:00 when I put my sooty foot on the floor.

Breakfast was even later. Much later too.More like an early lunch. I wasn’t in any hurry. I had a nice relaxing morning doing the usual Sunday task of badger all.

Feeling a little peckish later, I made some cheese on toast. And that reminded me about my pie. I must do something about that later.

When I went out for my walk, I had a good look around, and saw a couple of things that I hadn’t noticed before.

There were four or five of these floats bobbing up and down just offshore, and each float was different. I’ve no idea what they are doing out there, and I’m convinced that I have never seen them before.

While I was photographing the floats, I was distracted by an aeroplane flying overhead.

This aeroplane is a Bolkow Bo-208C Junior apparently, a type that I haven’t noticed before. And it’s quite interesting because the Bolkow company was the successor to the legendary Messerschmitt aircraft company of Luftwaffe fame.

It’s amazing what is out there once you start to look for it.

Talking of things being out there if only you look for them, the air was so clear that there was an excellent view of Jersey today.

So cropping out a selection of an image, blowing it up, which I can do despite modern anti-terrorist legislation, and enhancing the colours, you can see some of the houses and other buildings dotted along the coastline of the island.

It’s hard to believe that that’s almost 60 kms (35 miles) away. But then that’s all thanks to the big zoom lens that I bought in October.

In the other direction, looking down the Baie de Mont St Michel, the view was just as good.

Going as far out as I could, I still couldn’t see the Mont itself and the buildings thereupon. But the big hotel complex just a few hundred yards away from the Mont is clearly visible.

To give you some idea of perspective, that’s about 30 kms (18 miles) away as the crow flies.

And so back from my walk, I started by making another rice pudding.

While that was cooking, I fried a couple of leeks and onions with a few mushrooms and a tin of flageolet beans. When it was all thoroughly cooked, I added the tofu mix from yesterday, thoroughly stirred it in and heated it all through.

While I was waiting for the mixture to cool down, I prepared a pizza and stuck that in the oven to cook;

While the pizza was cooking, I took out a roll of pastry from the oven. It had dried and cracked so I had to wet it slightly and roll it. Good job that I had bought my rolling pin a while ago.

After it had been rolled, I greased a pie dish and put the pastry in. Added the pie filling and then folded over the excess pastry.

The pizza came out of the oven and the pie went in. I also added the rice pudding so that it would cook further.

The pizza was delicious, although it could have benefited from a longer period in the oven, and so was the rice pudding. The pie looks really good and I can’t wait to try it.

There was just me outside tonight for my evening walk. It wasn’t really cold and wasn’t really windy. It sounds very good after the beautiful day but I bet that there’s more winter to come.

The tide was still on its way out by the looks of things but nevertheless there was a good photo of the wves rolling up and down the beach at the Plat Gousset just by the Casino

So now I’ll try yet again for an early night. And hopefully a good sleep, without an attack of cramp. I need it.

And I’ve just found out that we are going to have a visitor tomorrow. Neptune has just turned into the bay up by Cherbourg and there’s only one place where she will be going.

floats granville manche normandy france

st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

cabanon vauban pointe de carolles mont st michel granville manche normandy france

old military buildings pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

old military buildings granville manche normandy france

atlantic wall world war 2 bunker granville manche normandy france

trawler undergoing repair chantier navale granville manche normandy france

boat lift chantier navale granville manche normandy france

port de granville harbour manche normandy france

port de plaisance granville harbour manche normandy france

chemin de la roche gauthier granville manche normandy france

st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

speedboat st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

ullouville granville manche normandy france

speedboat st pair sur mer granville manche normandy france

rue st gaud granville manche normandy france

old crane port de granville harbour manche normandy france

art deco building rue du port granville manche normandy france

marite port de granville harbour granville manche normandy france

Friday 1st February 2019 – WHAT A WAY …

… to start the day.

The alarms certainly went off this morning, but what did I care? I turned over and went back to sleep.

07:40 when I awoke and that in itself was nothing like what time I finally left my bed. All I can say is that I must have needed it;

And so that was the morning messed up. A late start, an even later breakfast and that was that.

It’s been a quiet day today though. I’ve been working on a 3D animation project for most of it. Three or so years ago I made a couple of animations but despite their being made on a 3D program they were really only two-dimensional and besides, I’ve forgotten most of what I did back then.

And so I set to work with a will.

The problem is though that you become so absorbed in a project that you don’t realise just how quickly the time goes. It ended up being a late lunch and an even later tea, and I don’t feel as if I have accomplished anything.

In the heat of the action I forgot to make any hummus today and so it was cheese again for lunch. There’s some old stuff that needs eating.

This afternoon there was a high wind and rain outside. The sea was pretty rough.

And I was lucky enough to catch Thora setting out from the harbour heading back to Jersey. No idea what she was carrying though. I couldn’t see clearly.

I hadn’t noticed her come in though. She must have sneaked in on the high tide during the night.

Having watched her sail … “diesel” – ed … off into the sunset, I went round to the other side of the headland too watching her disappear into the sea-mist.

The weather wasn’t really so good out there and the photography was not up to much. But it brought out an eerie view of the Ile de Chausey in the background, hidden in the mist

Tea was a burger in a bap with vegetables and potatoes, followed by the rest of yesterday’s rice pudding. Just as delicious as yesterday’s.

The rain had stopped when I went out for my walk. And there was no-one around at all. Minette was there but being stand-offish again. She wandered off when I tried to stroke her.

Today, with a late start, I just wandered off for a brief 10 minutes. I suppose that that’s an improvement.

But I’m looking forward to a decent sleep tonight and I might even have a good day tomorrow. After all it is a shopping day.

waves pointe du roc granville manche normandy france

fishing boat baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

thora marite port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora port de granville harbour manche normandy france

thora baie de mont st michel granville manche normandy france

thora ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

Sunday 27th January 2019 – NOW THAT’S …

… more like it.

No alarm this morning. And when I finally did awaken it was a gorgeous, beautiful 10:15. And when I finally did rise up from my stinking pit, it was an even better 10:40. Now why can’t I do this every Sunday when I don’t have to catch a train?

There was plenty of time to go on my travels too. Last night I was once more upon the Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour. There was a musician playing the guitar and singing and at some point he had invited me to join in. But when we reached the point where I should have joined in, someone else from the back of the room took up the part. And that upset me somewhat. It was something similar to the scene in The Gendarme At St Tropez when, on his way to choir practice, Louis de Funès arrests a burglar. A little later I had to go to the restaurant and take with me a crate of stuff, including half a dozen bottles. But I was so weak that it was a struggle to carry it, and when I found that it wasn’t needed and had to take it back, I couldn’t move. I had to put it on the floor and drag it, but that was even more difficult.

With a very late breakfast, I didn’t bother with lunch. Just a few pieces of fruit and a slice of my Christmas cake. It’s even better as it matures, although there is a limit.

But with it being Sunday, I had a very lazy day and didn’t do too much at all. I downloaded a program from the internet and had a play around with it, but it doesn’t work as well as I would like.

I also resurrected an ancient program from about 10 years ago to give that another go, but there seems to be an issue with that. Mind you, it’s been transformed through several operating systems and several computers so it’s probably not compatible with new technology and there’s probably been an upgrade along the way.

I eschewed my afternoon walk today. The wind was howling around outside like nobody’s business. It didn’t look very good at all.

This evening though, when I went out for my evening walk after a delicious vegan pizza, the wind had died down somewhat.

It was now a mere hurricane strength, but because the tide was so far out, there were no impressive waves crashing down on the promenade at the Plat Gousset.

Had I been out this afternoon I might have had some kind of impressive view. But as Kenneth Williams once famously said, “I’m not getting wet for a load of bleeding birds”.

Minette the black cat was out there tonight on her windowledge. And believe it or not, that’s the only person to whom I’ve spoken today.

So tomorrow, back to work. there’s a lot to do and I keep on putting it off.

night sea plat gousset granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 – IT’S SNOWING!!!

Well, it was this morning.

it started at about 09:30 and went on until about 11:00. And by that time there was a healthy white covering across the courtyard out here. Not exactly an Alpine vista but it’s the first snow that I’ve seen this winter. We just don’t get it in Normandy like we did in the Auvergne.

You might be excused for thinking that having gone to bed last night and not set the alarms for this morning, I might have missed it. But with it having been an early night, by the time that 05:00 came round I was wide awake.

But wide awake is not the same as being out of bed.On a Day of Rest (to replace my Sunday lie-in) 08:00 was much more like it, although I have known better.

And Nerina put in an appearance last night. She was apparently doing some kind of research into performing dogs and I remembered that I had actually written a document on this during my University studies. So I started to sift through everything that I had written but to my dismay I couldn’t find it. I thought that it was at some time during the last year or so but I’d been all the way back for a few years and it wasn’t there. So I was wondering if I had written it but not yet submitted it. This all went on for quite some considerable time.

While I was watching the snow falling, I attacked some work that needed doing. making all kinds of enquiries about my lost passport. But provided that I can negotiate the TGV back to France tomorrow, the urgency has lessened. I’ve had another message concerning something that I need to do and for which I need my passport, and that’s not going to happen for quite a while.

At lunchtime I nipped outside into the snow to buy a baguette from the supermarket down the road. Tomato and vegan cheese baguette was delicious.

This afternoon, I didn’t do very much at all. I drifted around going through some more paperwork and then made a start on the packing. But I couldn’t keep going for long and ended up having a little … err … repose for an hour or so. This really is getting somewhat out-of-hand and I’m becoming more and more dismayed by the fact that I simply can’t keep it up any longer.

It was about 18:30 when I finally came to, having missed the opportunity to go out and buy the second instalment of my medication. At least there’s enough to keep me going for the next month, and then we’ll have to see how we go.

Tea was my second weinerschnitzel with potatoes and frozen veg. Just as delicious as yesterday. And followed by the rest of the raspberry sorbet. With everything (almost) now finished off, I had a mega-washing-up and cleaning session; followed by the rest of the packing. Leave the place as I would like to find it, which will come as a major surprise to anyone who knows me.

It wasn’t that cold when I went out for my evening walk. A mere minus 2°C. There was some scattered snow about and everywhere was quite icy, and for that reason there weren’t many people about at all. And I didn’t go far either. The walk does me good but there’s no point in going mad.

Before going to bed, I finished the packing and had a good check-around to make sure that I’ve not forgotten anything. I’m fed up of losing stuff and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, over the years I’ve left a trail of my possessions scattered all over the Northern Hemisphere.

An early start in the morning. I can’t afford to hang about.

Monday 14th January 2019 – NEW KITS ON THE BLOCK

On my evening walk around the old medieval town this evening I was accosted by a little tabby kitten sitting on a windowledge.

I don’t recall having seen this one before. But it’s small, young and very playful and even let me pick it up for a while.

And that’s not the only thing that’s new on the block either.

There was a phone call at about 10:00. “Which is your door?”
“Never mind – I’ll come down”

So down I went just in time to see a big van pull up outside in the street. And two minutes later I was staggering up the stairs with a huge box.

That’s right – the new computer has arrived.

It took quite a considerable amount of unpacking too – with protective devices everywhere inside it, all of which had to be removed.

The machine is quite attractive, but I’m not going very much by aesthetics. I want it to work and work well. Laptops are all well and good for what they are but there is nothing like a big powerful desktop machine.

It was just as well that he phoned up at about 10:00, because had he done so very much earlier there might have been a problem.

Despite having gone to bed at a reasonable time, I was wide-awake at 03:50, and just couldn’t go back to sleep.

Not for ages anyway. I was tossing and turning around for quite some considerable time before I could finally drop off. And then the alarm went off, I just couldn’t haul myself out of bed, and went back to sleep. It was more like 08:45 when I finally took my courage in my hands and surfaced.

I’d been on my travels too. Some old guy had been a professional diver and had been involved in a great many professional treasure hunts. He was now long-retired and was actually 102 and reckoned himself to be close to death. He wanted to do just one very last dive before he went the way of the west so went down to a place where he had been treasure-hunting on many occasions but with no success. So down he went, and at the very last moment he actually managed to find a heavy chain hidden in the silt that led to where the treasure was hidden.

This morning I finished off the uploading of data onto the external drive and then we had the interruption for the delivery of the computer.

After lunch, I started to configure the new computer. And I’ve already found one problem. The antenna on the wi-fi isn’t strong enough to pick up the fluctuating signal. It fades in and out too much. I’m either going to have to move the transmitter or else go for a cable hook-up.

But apart from that, it works about 10 times faster than the laptop did. And the image is so much clearer too.

There was the usual afternoon walk too.

My route was, as usual, around the Pointe du Roc. And there parked outside one of the old gun emplacements of the Atlantic Wall, were a couple of World War II jeeps.

I’ve heard a story that they might be reopening a couple of bunkers to make some kind of tourist attraction here, and so I’m wondering if these jeeps and the people with them have anything to do with that.

Tea tonight was a burger on a bap with potatoes and veg.

Later this evening, the evening walk around the walls was done in total solitude. Not a soul about in the streets except for my kitten of course.

But the air and the sky were quite clear and you could see for miles tonight.

Jersey stood out quite clearly and you could see the lights of St Helier quite easily on the horizon.

There were also the floodlights of three or four trawlers working out to sea.

I don’t recall if I have taken a photo of the rue Clemenceau just recently.

With it being such a clear, calm night I stopped and took a photo of it to add to my database of images.

And on that note, I turned tail and headed for home – stopping to give my kitten a little stroke on the way.

So while the new computer is busy uploading a huge pile of files, I’m going to bed. I’ll have to try to do better tomorrow.

night st helier jersey granville manche normandy france

Tuesday 8th January 2019 – IT’S JUST LIKE …

… old times in here right now. I’m up to my knees, and probably even deeper, in papers and documents right now.

As part of my little project I have to find all kinds of paperwork going back 6 years. This last 18 months is pretty straightforward since I’ve been here but prior to that, especially during the period when I was ill my paperwork was all over the place.

However, when I was back down there in August I grabbed as much of it as I could and brought it back. So now, I have to go through about three sacks full of paper to find what I need.

I’m not having a great deal of luck from that point of view (at least, so far and there is still plenty to go at) but it really IS astonishing what you find when aren’t looking for it. After I took early retirement in 2004 I worked for a couple of years for an employment agency and for two American companies while I saved up to buy the roofing for my house in the Auvergne.

I’d practically written off anything to do with that period of employment, but today going through the European Paper Mountain I came across my registration certificate for the Belgian National Pensions Office. I’m not sure if I’m entitled to a pension from Belgium and even if I am, it won’t be anything at all to write home about, but at least I can write and make enquiries. You never know.

This morning I had something of a surprise.

When I awoke it was 06:45. What had happened to the alarm?

And then I remembered. Tuesday last week was New Year’s Day, and the previous Tuesday was Christmas Day. So I had switched off the alarms for Tuesday, hadn’t I?

And being nice and relaxed, I’d been on my travels. In a hotel trying to do a pile of paperwork in my room but not being able to concentrate, I went down to the reception area. There it was even worse, so I went back upstairs and tried again, but with no more luck than before. So in the end I packed my things and went outside to try to work out there, but the lorry driver who was taking me on saw me coming and pulled out of the lorry park, did a lap around the block and pulled up alongside me, blocking the road. And so I had to climb aboard, even though it meant that I wasn’t going to be able to do what I wanted to do before I reached home.

A slightly later breakfast (but not as late as some days just recently) and then a chat to Liz on the internet. She and Terry had an important meeting this morning so I wished them luck.

First thing that I needed to do was to obtain a couple of certificates from the British Government. Luckily, this can be done by internet but it’s time-consuming and took a lot of research – as well as being quite expensive.

When that was finally out of the way, I went down to Caliburn and brought up all of the paperwork. And despite stopping for lunch (more soup from Liz), my two walks and tea (a stuffed pepper) I was hard at it all day.

A good proportion of the paperwork has gone in the bin as “no longer necessary” but I found more vital paperwork that I expected to find – in fact I ended up being disappointed in that with a little more effort I might have had a lot more and I’m wondering where the rest might be.

On my walk this afternoon, there were a few people around for a change. It’s been quiet just recently out there.

Another place that was busy was the Chantier Navale. There are quite a few ships hauled out of the water right now receiving some kind of attention there.

I don’t recall having seen it so busy in the past. It’s clearly a booming business and I would have loved to have seen it in its heyday prior to 1992 when all of the Newfie trawlers were sailing out of here.

But there are still a few ships sailing out of here.

We have the gravel boats like Neptune of course, and the ferries to the Ile de Chausey and Jersey, but we also have the little freighters like Normandy Trader and Thora running the freight shuttles to Jersey.

Here today we have Thora in port. We noticed her last night having presumably come in on the evening tide

But despite the crowds this afternoon, this evening the walk around the walls was totally deserted apart from me.

But there was plenty of interest to see because the wind had risen and it was blowing quite strongly outside. The tide was well in too and so the waves were crashing down on the promenade at the Plat Gousset with quite some considerable force.

There was no-one down there taking advantage of the free shower on offer, which is probably not a surprise to anyone.

And Thora was still in harbour too.

That’s quite a surprise because she doesn’t usually hang about here for as long as this. I hope that she’s not having any difficulties.

And no cats tonight. I came straight home, had a chat to Alison after I came back and that’s my lot. A decent night’s sleep and then I’ll attack the paperwork part II. At least, if I know what I don’t have, I can start from there.

And I didn’t crash out today. How about that?

storm waves night plat gousset granville manche normandy france

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality